I don't want to write a plot driven story, I find them to be overly dense and without a protagonist to care about its more like reading a textbook than a work of fiction. But I find world building is very difficult to do from a single character's limited perspective, it's can creep into plot driven when using a third person limited narrator or a first person narrator, with long internal monologues explaining why this thing is that way or why another character is behaving a certain way which I feel keep the story from progressing. Here a big offender in my eyes is 1984, the part where it is the wholesale reading of Goldstein's book (don't get me wrong, I think 1984 is masterfully written, I just don't like that part)
And here is where I am torn: I wrote quite a bit (nearly 15k words over 6 or so "scenes") as an introduction to the world, where I feel it is a good balance between character driven and explanatory of how culture and technology may be different, and the events leading up to the introduction of the main character. I want to include it because I don't want explanations of why, let's say, the character isn't worried about spending nearly all of their savings in the middle of the story, or why certain honorifics are used, or how space elevators became a reality in such a short time. I currently have it available as the short story "Stealing Tomorrow". I don't want to include it because it has little to do with the story as I have it planned.
